Mr Campion's Fault Read Free Page A

landlord, empty of customers, closed for business and thoroughly blacked-out as if expecting an air raid.
    Technically, the Sun Inn was the last inhabited dwelling in Denby Ash proper. Beyond it there was the short, narrow bridge over the Oaker Beck (known locally as the ‘Okker Dyke’) and then the Huddersfield road and, half a mile down it on the right, the playing fields and buildings of Ash Grange School.
    Although he could not see it, Bertram knew what lay in the darkness away to his left. Everyone did, for the recently decommissioned Grange Ash colliery, or rather, its enormous spoil heap, dominated the daylight landscape and was almost as well-known a landmark as the towering Emley Moor television transmitter mast had become before its dramatic collapse earlier in the year.
    There was little moonlight available through the cloud cover but Bertram had no fear of the dark, nor of wandering off course. As long as his shoes continued to clatter on tarmac, the road would take him to the main gate and driveway of Ash Grange School. It was a walk he could do safely virtually blindfolded. The road ahead was, if not quite Roman, relatively straight, headlights could be seen a good way off and the night was still – an indicator of snow perhaps? – which meant any vehicle would probably be heard before seen.
    And yet he was taken completely by surprise when a form travelling at speed loomed out of the darkness.
    His initial thought was that he was confronting a large and aggressive rat with red coals for eyes; and a rat which was scuttling directly towards him in menacing silence.
    Only when it was far, far too late for him to do anything to avoid the inevitable did Bertram Browne realize that bearing down on him was a very metallic freewheeling vehicle, not a fleshy rodent, and that what he had taken to be burning demonic eyes were in fact the glowing ends of cigarettes being smoked by the driver and a passenger.
    Then there was only brief pain and longer, total darkness.

TWO
Situation(s) Suddenly Vacant
    Ash Grange School for Boys
    Denby Ash,
    Nr Wakefield,
    West Riding,
    Yorkshire.
    [
Head:
A.J.B. Armitage, MA(Cantab)]
    xiv.xi.MCMLXIX
    My Dear Perdita,
    I realize that I have been very lax in my duties as godfather; duties which I do not recognize as ending with the marriage of a godchild although I may have inadvertently given that impression by not having been in touch since your wedding to Rupert, who I am sure is proving a fine husband as he comes from a very fine family. Please, once again, accept my apologies for not attending the wedding itself, which unfortunately clashed with an unavoidable meeting of the Headmasters’ Conference. I hope my gift arrived in time and that it will be appreciated in the future. (My wife insists that a case of port wine is a most unsuitable wedding present, but I maintain that anyone who has a case of the ’63 will have ‘a wine for life’ as the poet – though I’m not sure which one – would have said.)
    Pleasantries aside – and you know we waste as little time as possible on pleasantries here in Yorkshire – there is a reason I am writing to you now; a selfish reason, I admit. I am well aware that convention rules that godparents do what they can to assist the prosperity and health of both the body and soul of the godchild, with nary a thought for the time and cost involved. However, I now find myself in the position of a godparent requiring assistance from their spiritual ward.
    I doubt if the press down south has carried reports of the tragedy which has affected us at Ash Grange, but up here it made something of a splash, meriting a paragraph in the
Yorkshire Post
, though hardly the sort of publicity we would seek. I refer to the tragic road accident which resulted in the death of our senior English master Bertram Browne. It has proved a double blow for the school as it has left us short-staffed and Gabbitas and Thring are unable to supply a suitable replacement until